


When The Wolves Are Silent (Only the Moon Howls)

by akingdomofunicorns



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Gen, Sister-Sister Relationship, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 00:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akingdomofunicorns/pseuds/akingdomofunicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"These are women with no mercy for those who’ve wronged them; these are women you do not want to meet in the battlefield. Ally with them or pray the wolves forget about us.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Wolves Are Silent (Only the Moon Howls)

Sansa awaits. She waits for winter to come and go, she waits for Sweetrobin to grow, for Petyr to finally explode, for spring to come again. She awaits as Alayne Stone, but she tries to remember everything about Sansa Stark; so she thinks of Father (Ned, always Ned, never Littlefinger), of Mother (Catelyn, always Cat, never a nameless whore), of all her brothers, Robb and Bran and Rickon and even Jon, serious and quiet and bastard born Jon (like herself, like Alayne), and of her little sister, wilful Arya. She thinks of Theon and his smirks (Theon, who had been fun in a mean and terrible way, who had been kind to her, who had called her pretty when no one was looking, who had burnt her home and killed her brothers and destroyed half of her hopes), Old Nan and her stories, Maester Luwin and Uncle Benjen and Hodor and Jory Cassel. And she remembers the ones she feared too: Joffrey and Cersei, Tywin and the Hound and the Mountain and Tyrion, too, though he had been rather kind (“ _kind and selfish and unfair,_ ” she thinks, “ _but kind nonetheless, not as cruel as the rest; yet he wanted me to love him when I could not love anyone —I was but a girl_ ”).

She waits for when the time comes to be Lady Sansa again. No, not lady: _Queen_ Sansa.

She waits because that’s what she does best.

* * *

Arya keeps quiet and waits as she watches everything. She is no one and as no one she is everybody at once. For the whole of winter she stays where she’s safe, where no one knows her, and she tries to forget. But the dreams come every night and suddenly she’s stronger and faster and paws claw at the soil and she smells blood and flesh and something sweet. She smells a sister.

But she still waits and she feasts on snow and rats and tree bark when she feels too hungry and in the morning she returns to her training, to her knives and her poisons, to her needles and her swords and the faces, all the faces.

She tries to forget and still she remembers. Red hair, grey eyes, the blue of the river and a tree with eyes. They’re flashes of a past life, a life No one remembers well, though there’s not much to remember: blue dresses and leather boots and the smell of sweat and molten steel and running, always running and hiding and running again.

There’s nothing much to remember and yet she waits, because that’s what they’ve taught her.

* * *

Sansa dreams. Sometimes she’s asleep and she’s a wolf or a crow or a hummingbird and she runs and flies and sings and she is _free_ ; sometimes she’s awake and she daydreams of Winterfell and Arya (“ _Arya, rude and wilful and fast as the wind Arya, I hope she’s alive, my only sister_ ”) and the Godswood and the hotsprings and _home_ , how she wishes for home.

Sometimes she says their names outloud, when she’s alone in her room and it’s dark, so dark she shivers when she remembers Nan’s old stories of shadows and demons haunting young and beautiful maidens, but she always stops when she gets to Arya’s name.

“I know what happened to them, everyone of them, except for her. Joffrey killed Father and the Freys and the Boltons betrayed Robb and Mother and Theon burnt Bran and Rickon to death, but I know nothing of Arya, she disappeared and everyone has forgotten her, everyone but me,” she tells her own reflection, trying to catch something of the old Sansa in her eyes, in her mouth, in her cheekbones, but all she can see is her pale skin and her dull eyes and the bags under her eyes and her brown hair, brown and tangled and muddy. “I want her back, if she’s alive I want her back. She is my only sister and I don’t want to be alone, I want her back.”

But Arya is not there when she wakes up and she’s Alayne again. She’s alone. So she dreams, because in her dreams, everything is better.

* * *

No one kills mercilessly because that’s what they tell her to do. War is war and death is death, but it’s not about surviving, not anymore. She tries to convince herself that it doesn’t matter, that there is only one God she believes in, only one she serves, but that brings back memories of honour, of family and duty and winter, and it’s harder than ever to be faceless, to be no one.

In her dreams, she’s a wolf and she travels north until she comes face to face with a man and a white direwolf with red eyes. In her dreams, the man is dark and white, his eyes are grey, like her master’s, and his mouth is just a firm line, but he’s covered in furs and his eyes fill with tears when he sees her.

“Nymeria,” he whispers, but she wakes up.

“Jon.”

She cannot feign she is no one anymore. She’s Arya and she has to go back home.

* * *

She learns how to whisper. She’s good at it, too. Her words are soft and her tongue is sweet, so sweet, as sweet and poisonous as crab’s eye, pretty and red and deadly. Petyr is an excellent teacher and so was the Queen, and she’s a natural whisperer. Mya and Randa make sure she’s tethered to the earth, though, because it’s easy to forget what’s her goal.

And when she’s not planting seeds of doubt in Sweetrobin’s bannermen’s minds (they’re Sweetrobin’s, not Littlefinger’s, never his), she’s taking care of her young cousin. Of course, he grows taller and broader of shoulder, there’s a bit of Tully in him after all, but he’s still sick and frail and pale and though he acts more like a man grown, more like Bran when he was still a boy and even like Robb, if she looks hard enough, he’s still childlike and inmature and very much Lysa’s son. But he’s not an evil child and neither is he ill-tempered, he’s learned to be sweet and gentle and he’s smart and capable, smart enough to know when to keep quiet and when to loose a battle. And she’s taught him how to handle Littlefinger in order to survive, how to make it seem as if he’s not in control at all while they wait for his downfall. Sweetrobin (she still calls him that, she’s the only one allowed to keep calling him that, for she’s the only one he trusts, she’s the only one he loves) is good at making everyone think he’s more unstable than he really is, so they don’t pay him any mind when they think he’s too far gone to understand anything (“ _You are good to me, Alayne, like my mother used to. But are you my mother, Alayne? And is Petyr my father?”_ and how her heart had hurt when she’d answered him, “ _No, I’m not your mother, I’m your friend, and a sister, if you wish. And Father is not your father either_ ”. After that she’d taken more interest in his fragile health, she’d made a bigger effort to take care of him and she’d pushed Littlefinger away from his medicines so as to keep him alive for longer).

She whispers and she waits, because this is how she fights. Battles are won with steel and death and blood; wars are won with soldiers and paper and ink and words and the will to survive. She’s not a soldier, not at all, but she’s a fighter and fight she will —there’s no one on this earth who’s as determined to survive as she is.

* * *

Death feels cold on her lips, as cold as winter must be. She still dreams, wolfdreams that come to her as soon as she closes her eyes and then the man, the dark man that smells sweet and fresh like snow and mead and wood, that smells as a brother, is by her side and everything is better. She longs to play with her real brother, the white one who’s a member of her pack, the one who came to this world silent as a shadow in the same litter as she. But they don’t play, not yet, for there are enemies lurking in the dark. She walks through the snow in quick steps, her silent brother steps away from her, and they wait in silence, howling from time to time, they wait and they search for the dead who rise. She can smell them: rotten and cold and invisible and terrible.

When she wakes, she’s Arya again and she’s scared. Nymeria (alive and well and with Jon, now) is up North, fighting an enemy that cannot be defeated as easily as a man, and she’s stuck in a city where she’s no one. She has to go back, she has to fight. There’s no time to be scared anymore, not since she understood what was happening, not since she’s remembered Jon again.

“I shouldn’t have left, not when there was still Jon. And Sansa,” she adds, because she doesn’t know anything of what’s been of Sansa (if she’s still alive, if the Lannisters have killed her, if she’s been married to the enemy and if she’s borne their children), “and Sansa because she’s my sister. There’s only us now, Jon and I and Sansa, please, let her be fine.”

There’s something in her heart —no, she hasn’t had a heart since so long it’s hard to remember if she ever had one in the first place… There’s something in her stomach, in her mind, that keeps crawling at her skin until her eyes fill with tears. It’s the notion that she’s going back home. It must be.

She thinks of Sansa’s red curls and pink lips and of Jon’s grey eyes and gentle hands and it almost feels like having them near her. If she finds Sansa, she’s going to let her brush her hair and braid it and then they’ll sew some, even if it kills her.

It’s easier to think of her than of the battle that lies ahead. Others coming back to haunt the living and winter upon them all. 

* * *

She seizes control of the Eyrie with the first snowflakes and they hang Littlefinger until he turns violet, but they don’t let him die. Sweetrobin has been waiting for this moment for so long he’s flushed from head to toe. When Petyr Baelish’s skin goes from red to purple to blue, he asks the lords to bring him down and he lets the little traitor savour his lasts moments of life before they shove him out the Moon Door.

“It’s a pity I won’t get to see his skin turn green, but my Mother’s been avenged at last,” he tells her over a cup of iced honey milk hours later, when the sky is dark and the moon is high, surrounded by it’s faithful sentinels. “Will you help me rule, Alayne?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Will you tell me all your secrets, too?”

The wine sits heavy on her stomach, so she takes his cup instead and sips at the cold and sweet milk.

“Yes, some day I will. But not today, Robert, not today.”

* * *

The girl’s skin is dark and smooth, her hair a mass of tight ringlets and her eyes of onyx and gold. And her voice, her voice is sweet and warm, but it’s the words coming out of her mouth that make her chest widen and her fingers stiffen.

“They need some people, not many want to sail to Westeros, it seems. Not even us, the whores, though we could warm lots o’ them beds; and not even them, the merchants, who’d make a fortune, wouldn’t they? But the land is cursed, ya see, and none of us want to try our luck. We can be whores anywhere, there’s always need for us some place or other. The men who sail in a week’s turn won’t be coming back, I tell ya,” she fake whispers, her curls falling over her shoulders and tickling Arya in the nose, “might we wonder over there, see to the brave men, find a fair one who won’t mind a girl with some missing teeth; ya see, Dedeei doesn’t take it well when the men don’t want her, and earn some blessed coin, yes? I can even teach you what to do, if ya want. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

“No, thank you. When did you say they were leaving?”

“Why? Some strong sailor’s caught your eye, girl?”

“No, not at all. I might know someone who might be interested to join the crew, that’s all.” Arya’s words are soft and slurred, a mixture of dialects and accents she’s picked over the years, all the people she’s been now crowd her brains to the point she fears they’ll get cooked. Yet they remain unscathed and the girl (Bien, was her name? Maybe Lien? She can’t remember, not that she cares) smiles a crooked smile.

“I told ya, girl, in a week’s turn they’ll be sailing ‘cross the sea. Say goodbye to that friend of yours and to your pretty sailor, they won’t be coming back. They might promise you, but they’ll forget ya for a girl of honour with some silver in her and a father with a name, ya’ll see. You don’t want no bastards, I tell ya, whores and bastards, they never end well, little girl. Find yourself a nice good pimp who won’t beat ya too much and settle yourself, sweetling; life’s short and you might as well enjoy it somehow, better than being a beggar.”

“I’m not a beggar!”

“Sure thing not, love. If ya change your mind, ask for Bienna in Abela’s House, and I’ll find you a place with us. It’s okay, you see, fucking ain’t so bad once you get used to it.”

Bienna is gone before she can answer and all that’s left for her to do is walk to the port and search for the stupid ship. _The Menina_ is not a big ship, but it’s big enough, she thinks.

Big enough to get her home.

* * *

She does not reveal herself, not yet, it’s not the time. She lets the snow fall and the winds blow and the days pass, and she whispers softly in Sweetrobin’s ear. She waits for war to subside with winter’s harshness and she prays for a miracle, something that will tip the balance in her favour and will give her an advantage. She’s always been good at waiting, but she’s become a master at it with Littlefinger’s guidance.

“The Lannisters are asking me to bend the knee to their king or they will take the Eyrie from me.”

“Is that what they say?” she asks, not taking her eyes away from her needlework.

“Yes.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know. Bend the knee, I suppose.”

“Are you sure?”

“What else could I do?”

“How many kings are there now?” she asks, measuring her stitches with a clinical eye.

“King Stannis Baratheon, who calls himself the rightful king of the Iron Throne; King Tommen Baratheon, the puppet of the Dowager Queen; King Euron Greyjoy, a kraken of the seas and pretty much a savage. Am I forgetting someone?”

“Yes,” she says, changing the blue thread for a golden one, “you forgot Queen Daenerys Targaryen, _Mother of Dragons_.”

“She’s no king, but a queen,” he laughs.

“Yes, you’re right, but still she claims the Iron Throne. And you forgot the new whispers coming from Storm’s End.”

“I’ve already mentioned King Stannis and King Renly is long dead.”

“Those are old whispers, Sweetrobin, old and well known. There are new whispers, my sweet, whispers of a long lost prince, one we thought dead many years ago. Do you remember Princess Elia of House Martell?”

Sweetrobin smiles, his eyes blue and light, his hair shinier than ever and his skin smoother; Petyr’s death has set them both free (though she’s still trapped, trapped as a bird in a cage of steel and copper and gold). He has a nice smile, she thinks, sweet and shy, a boyish smile.

“She was the wife of the Dragon Prince, Rhaegar Targaryen, the one who kidnapped Lady Lyanna Stark. Princess Elia was raped and murdered along with her children during the Sack of King’s Landing during Robert’s Rebellion.”

“Yes. You said she had children.”

“A girl, Rhaenys, and a babe, Aegon.”

“And they were both murdered?”

“Princess Rhaenys was stabbed to death by Amory Lorch, Prince Aegon was killed by Gregor Clegane when he smashed the babe against a wall. They say he was still covered in her son’s brains when he raped her.”

“It is something they say, yes, and it is something you must keep in mind when dealing with other men: they are cruel and wild and savages, always thirsty for blood and coin and women. The Mountain was a monster, but you must always remember that he was just a puppet of the Lord Tywin. They come in different shapes and forms, different bodies, and no one is safe from them.”

“What must we do, Alayne?” he asks, his soft eyes scared and his hands shaking. She runs her hand through his hair (thin, when hers is thick; shiny, when hers is dull; messy, when hers falls flat around her cheeks and her shoulders, when once it was bright and beautiful), comforting him; it’s a way of sharing their warmth and letting the other know that they’re not alone. “What can we do?”

“We fight them, Robert, we fight them all. You must not bend the knee to the Lannisters, not yet. They murdered your aunt, Lady Catelyn Stark, and your cousin, King Robb, and Littlefinger pushed your mother out of the Moon Doors; we cannot trust them, we cannot give them our support. The Eyrie will wait, see if Queen Daenerys and the self-proclaimed King Aegon Targaryen, the sixth of his name, land and they bring fire and blood with them. We will wait: _winter is coming_ and with it there will be changes. Patience will get you far, they say.”

“Is that something your father used to say?”

She smiles, the thick walls she’s built to protect her slowly cracking.

“No, he used to tell me to _always remember my endgame_.”

Later, in the darkness of her room, she buries her head in a pillow and screams, she screams until her throat is sore and her lungs are burning. She still can’t call them mother and brother, the sweet pieces of her heart she’s lost to war and death and pain. She still hasn’t been able to bury them properly, and so she waits.

The Stark words, they never meant much to her, just old stories and the end of summer; now she fears them, for they feel foreign, unfamiliar and dark. They’re lost memories of honour and happiness, of home. And it’s hard to remember, the meaning of home. 

* * *

She leaves Braavos on board of _The Menina_ and she never looks back. She’s not faceless anymore, but she’s not Arya either. Not yet. And she fears she won’t be Arya until she sees Westeros again, until she finds Jon and maybe Sansa and Nymeria, she longs for Nymeria. And there’s more people she misses, now she remembers them: Yoren, Hot Pie, Ned Dayne, Beric and Thoros of Myr and a bastard blacksmith with dark hair and blue eyes. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she misses Gendry with a burning need, she misses his warmth at night and his stubborness and the way they hadn’t said goodbye. She misses having a friend and she hates how unfair she had been, how she’d thought he’d abandoned her, but in the end she was the one who left. She should’ve been a better friend, she should’ve been a better Stark.

She likes the sea: the swaying of the ship, the salt in her skin and her hair, the endless water on both sides, the blue sky above their heads. She works hard when she’s aboard, tying knots and untying, little hands twisting and pulling and holding down. Her skin feels raw at the end of the day, raw and pink and red, hard as boiled leather and smooth as granite. She’s good at it, too, her fingers quick and deft and strong, her arms skinny but well muscled. She’s a natural sailor, they tell her —it’s not the first time, either, everyone tells her she’s a natural at something: a soldier, a sailor, a killer, a knight… They never ask her to be a lady, and though it makes her happy that she’s not asked to wear a dress and sing silly songs, she misses her mother’s red hair and her stern eyes while telling her to try harder, to be better ( _be more like Sansa, that’s what they were thinking_ , she believes).

There’s a little girl in the ship, a babe of no more than three, black hair, olive skin and grey eyes. She’s a chubby child, her fat little legs full of freckles and her fingers always sticky, but Arya likes her. The babe is the only one she likes. Her name is Vayona, a stupid name for a child, she thinks, but it suits her, somehow. The kid is sweet and happy, always smiling and drooling. She sits quietly beside Arya and hums, and she shares her apples and her bread when she sees Arya is sweating like a pig for slaughter.

“Why are you sailing to Westeros?” she asks the girl one morning, while they’re both sipping on sweet water and chewing on dry meat.

They call it sweet water as a jape, for everything is salty when in the middle of the sea, water and apples and honey all alike.

Vayona smiles and flaps her arms as a bird, and Arya knows what she means.

“And you?”

“Winter. I’ll be the one who brings it.”

* * *

News come from King’s Landing that the Queen is with child and Sansa struggles to imagine sweet, scheming Margaery sharing a bed with Tommen. In her mind, the King is still a child, but he must be thirteen at least, a man grown. They say he’s sweet tempered and good with the small-folk, but he’s still Cersei’s puppet; his sister has birthed twins, brown-skinned and green-eyed, both of them, Princes Quentyn and Eloi, and Joffrey’s body is still rotting someplace beneath the Red Keep, where the worms must have feasted on his flesh. She hopes they’d taken his manhood first and she feels naughty when the thought crosses her mind.

“A child will secure his claim,” she tells Sweetrobin while breaking their fast in the morning.

She spreads the butter over the bread, white and yellow and golden, creamy and rich and delightful, and takes a bite of the warm bread. They eat better than the rest of the realm, since their lands have remained untouched and the wild clans that used to threaten them are gone; and they get richer and richer, just like Dorne and the Free Cities. Neutrality suits them, she jokes, but she remains alert and she looks over the ledger entries.Arya used to be better with numbers, but she’s learnt a few handy things over the years; they have plenty of grain for bread, and what remains is sold to those in need; the ones who arrive running away from war are put to work on the fields and the barns, apprentices for the smiths and the bakers, cooks in the taberns and inns and youths for the Night’s Watch: ravens come from the North, Lord Commander Snow asks Lord Arryn for men to protect the realm from horrible things even the wildlings fear.

She remembers Jon, his soft smile and stern face, his sweet devotion to Robb and how close he was to Arya. She never gave him a chance, poor thing, always so loyal to her lady mother; she’d like to see him again, tell him she never hated him, but she loved her mother more, be able to call him brother and let him call her sister.

“Shall we keep neutral?”

“Yes, we must wait, keep quiet, provide them with grain, salt, honey, fruit… Whatever we have, we will sell; we did not ask for this war, but we will benefit from it. I have a feeling this will not last longer: someone will fall sooner or later, and then we will make our move. In the meantime, you shall make your people love you, earn their trust and loyalty, keep yourself as high as honour, and you will gather your strength, yes?”

“Yes, Alayne,” he says, smiling softly and cutting an apple in half.

* * *

Vayona’s mother is a plump woman with dark yellow hair and grey eyes, her skin is lighter than her daughter’s, but there’s still an olive tinge to it. Her breasts are full and heavy and both her belly and her waist grow thicker with each passing day. Vayona smiles and pats her mother in the knee everytime she sees her, but other than that she doesn’t really stay by her side; Vayona likes spending her time with Arya, and Arya likes having the babe keeping her company.

“We’re very close, now,” she tells the girl while working on a knot, “very close to my home. I am from the north, up, up and high, from a land where the winters are harsh and unforgiving and summer is never hot, but warm; we have snow on summer too, you see, white puffs that melt on our hair. I’d like to see Dorne, though: Dorne is down south, there are deserts there and the sun always shines hot over their skins. My mother was from the riverlands and she was going to marry my uncle, but he died, so she married my father instead, and she loved him dearly.”

 Vayona smiles, curled at her feet. They don’t talk much, they both like silence, but the babe is warm and soft against her cheek and sometimes they take a nap together and Vayona smells of something sweet, she smells of a home. She’s never cared much for babies (she used to have two baby brothers, Bran and Rickon, and she cared for them, but now their dead), but she’s a special girl, and she likes her.

She still has her wolfdreams, dreams where her pack is away from her, for she’s gone south again. She smells the river, the fish, their cold blood and slippery skin, she smells the snow and the grass under her feet, the wet soil and the men, the humans who walk on two legs and work and live under wood and stone, grey stone. Some of them piss themselves when they see her, they cry when they notice her fangs and tremble when she gets near them. She pays them no mind, for she’s caught a trail of something, a scent she knows from old, and she keeps going, needing to find where it comes from.

She’s fast, and everyone is panicking at her sight, so she’s able to avoid the wild humans who’d want to skin her and cook her. She smells something sweet, honey and milk and daisies, a drop of lavander and rosewater. In her mind, she sees red hair and blue eyes, blue like the snow shining under the sun, or frozen water. The scent is stronger near the market, where a woman in purple walks beside a boy with a blue cloak with some kind of bird embroidered in it. An eagle, surely. The woman sees her, a woman with brown hair and familiar blue eyes.

She wakes up abruptly, Vayona curled against her breast, and her heart beats wildly. She recognised the face, older and sharper, aye, but so much like Mother’s… She gets up, careful not to wake the girl, and grabs a piece of parchment to trace the sigil on the breastplates of the men-at-arms that had been surrounding her sister, the same that was on the boy’s cloak.

_Arryn, Wardens of the East, Lords of the Eyrie. As High as Honour._

“At least now I know where to go,” she thinks.

* * *

Having Nymeria by her side makes her feel powerful and safe, finally. She’s not Lady, no —Nym is wilder, harsher, wilful… Nym is like Arya used to be, back when they were still together. Everyone says that she had married the bastard of Bolton, but it can’t be, Nymeria would have gone to Arya, not to her. Besides, Arya was either dead or in hiding, like herself. Or up in the Wall, with Jon; she had always loved Jon best.

Sweetrobin’s scared of Nymeria and goes out of his way to avoid her, but she knows it is a sign. It’s Arya, telling her to wait a little bit longer, that she’s coming for her.

She’s always been the best at waiting.

* * *

She finds herself in an inn, Vayona and her mother at her side. She has enough money from all the people she’s killed along the years for a room and a hot meal, she’ll share hers with Vayona and buy another plate of soup for the woman.

The woman serving her is older, pretty in a way but rather plain; still, she looks warm and strong at the same time, tough on the teeth and hard. Jeyne, her name is, and she takes care of the orphans and her own sister, a girl her own age that smiles all too often.

“Where you going?” asks one of the boys, staring at Vayona curiously.

“The Eyrie.”

“That’s north-east from here,” Jeyne tells them, filling Arya’s plate with broth, “south of here you have Harrenhal, west from here there’s Riverrun, but it’s far away.”

“You running away from the war?”

Willow is sitting in front of them, pealing an apple for one of the younger girls; there aren’t many costumers, it seems, and Willow likes to walk around and see how things are going, sit herself beside the costumers and talk to them, learn of the news.

“I’m searching for someone.”

“Really? Who?”

“My sister.”

“How do you know she’s there?” asks a boy of about ten, who’s trying to wrestle one of the younger boys to the table to feed him.

“She’s been hiding, but I’ve heard things, I’ve seen things…”

“But…”

“Stop pestering her,” Jeyne orders, walkin past them with some jars of mead, “let them eat in peace.”

The boys surrounding them scatter, and they’re left alone, except for Willow, who keeps staring at them. It should unnerve her, but it doesn’t; she’s learnt a lot of things with the House of Black and White, things that make her quiet and fast and deadly, things that make her patient and cold; Willow is no threat, she’s sure, but still she watches her closely, still she remains on guard. It’s a part of her now, something that will stay with her forever, that she won’t be able to get rid of.

Willow seems to be about to say something when the door bursts open.

“They’re back!” a boy shouts. “I’ve seen them, half an hour from here! They come with wounded men!”

It’s as if the inn has been set on fire, Jeyne and Willow stop what they’re doing to gather food and bandages and they boil wine to treat the wounds. Vayona seems scared by the way everything’s become too noisy around her, but her mother is tending to her, so Arya gets up and walks to Jeyne.

“May I help?”

Jeyne doesn’t look up from what she’s doing, but she says, “Cut this to make more bandages.”

She does as she’s told; she’s a warrior, yes, but the same hands that kill must serve: all men must die, but they all must serve, too. So she helps the Heddles, because it’s women like them that still hold the bloody kingdom; not together, not at all, but at least it’s still standing, somehow, it hasn’t crumbled to the ground, yet (though she’s pretty sure it won’t last long, for winter is on it’s merry way).

A group of ten men enter the inn carrying the wounded over their shoulders, all bloody, black and blue bruises on their faces, covering their necks and arms.

“I can help you treat their wounds.”

Jeyne nods, and she takes some bandages, boiled wine and a needle. The thread she takes is thick and brown and rough, but it will work all the same. The man she’s cleaning up is tall and lean, well muscled and pale of skin, very pale; half of it is from the wound, so he’s clammy and weak, the other half it’s because of his colouring; she’s seen it before, sometime in Volantis, where there’s still some with the blood of Old Valyria; but even before then she’d seen it. She cleans the man’s face, scrubs the blood away from his hair, blond and soft, and pours the boiled wine into the ugly cut under his collarbone. Her stitches are uneven (they’ve always been uneven), but she patches him up as best as she can. She then sees that his eyes are wide open, blue eyes that seem almost purple, and she smiles.

“Why, if it isn’t the Lord of Starfall himself, here all bloody.”

Ned Dayne looks at her, he looks at her long and hard, trying to figure out who she is, surely. She wants him to recognise her, she wants someone to say her name out loud, right to her face —she wants to remember who she is.

Ned shouts and scrambles to his feet, before taking her hand in his and kissing it.

“My lady,” he says, wincing, “I apologise, I did not recognise you. We thought you dead.”

“Who is this, Ned?” asks Willow, her big eyes bursting with curiosity.

She turns to look at her, and sees that though nobody has stopped from tending the wounded men, they’re all staring at Ned. At her.

“Arya Stark,” but it’s not Ned who says it.

She sees him in the back of the room, where another man is stitching his arm. He’s grown taller and bulkier, if that’s possible, but his eyes are still as blue and his hair as dark, and he looks rather confused and angry, but hopeful and happy at the same time.

“Hello,” is all she can say to him

* * *

She has little birds of her own, now: orphan boys who seek to fill their empty bellies regularly; whores who are more than happy to help the Lord of the Vale if this way they can keep working and feeding their babes; men who’d do anything for coin with which to buy the pleasure they so desire. Men talk best when they’re in the arms of a naked woman, so that’s where Sansa gets most of her knowledge of what is going on.

She hears whispers of an army gathering in the Riverlands, an army with no banners, of fugitive knights and smallfolk, led by a tiny soldier, a girl of four and ten that snarls when she’s angry and feasts on her enemies’ flesh and blood; she gives the remaining bones and half of the flesh to the wolves, and they follow her to battle, crying and howling. Freys and Westerlanders are all slaughtered, no time for questions or for mercy. She feeds the children and lets the women kill their own rapists, and men are all too happy to follow her. They say she rides with a bull of a man at her side, a man so big and strong he smashes heads with no effort; a man that wields a hammer of steel, no ornaments, no precious rocks, just steel and leather at the handle; they say he’s the Usurper’s ghost. They also say Ser Arthur Dayne’s nephew rides with them, Dawn on his back, blond hair and purple eyes and a sense of justice that rivals a Stark’s. They call him the Sword of the Morning, the Lord of Starfall.

She knows it’s Arya, it couldn’t be anyone else.

“Sweetrobin,” she calls him, entering his chambers without letting the guard announce her first and closing the doors behind her, “call your bannermen.”

“We’re going to enter the war?” he asks, confused and scared.

He puts his cup down and gets up from the table.

“We’ll wait some more, and then we will march north,” she says.

* * *

They march towards the east with men thirsty for vengeance and justice, justice for their children and their women, their fathers and mothers and their houses.

“I left,” Ned tells her one night after they’ve set camp, “what with your mother and everything…”

“She’s not my mother.”

“Lady Stoneheart…”

Arya spits at the floor before taking a bite of the stale bread.

“She used to be Lady Catelyn, I know,” she says afterwards, “now she’s just an undead woman. Why did you come back, if you hate her so?”

“Because Dorne is doing nothing but apply salt to the wound. There’s a new King now, a Targaryen one who is ruling over the Stormlands and Dorne.”

“The Stormlands? They must hate him.”

“With a burning passion, of course; but his men are loyal to him and they’re new to the war, they’ve not hungered and they’re not tired like the rest and they’re slowly taking the Reach: they’ve closed the Roseroad to King’s Landing and they’re letting the smallfolk starve and they’ve also taken the bit of the Goldroad that goes through the Reach, but the Lannisters still have the River Road. Bitterbridge, Goldengrove, Grassy Vale, Longtable, Cider Hall, Ashford… they all tremble at the mention of Aegon Targaryen.”

“I care nothing for the South,” she says, breaking the bread to help the meat go down. “What’s of the North?”

“King Stannis took Winterfell from the Boltons, but had to return to the Wall to fight some unknown danger, so the Boltons took Winterfell again. The North is in a complete disarray.”

“And the False Arya?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s all right. Or it will be, once I get to my sister.”

Her boots are dirty with blood and grass, she notes, blood that’s still quite sticky from the last battle. She must look a mess, all dirty and sweaty and with her hair all tangled in a braid.

“And what’s with you and Gendry? You used to be friends.”

“He is mad at me.”

It’s so dark and though she knows she’s not alone anymore, she feels the loneliness in her bones. She remembers once longing for Jon most of all and she’d thought it would be the same now; but it isn’t, she’s been around men all her life, she’s seen what they can do and it’s been too long since they last saw each other, mayhaps he’s not the Jon she used to love anymore. What if he’s turned bitter and foul and cruel?

(But it can’t be, not her Jon, not him.)

She longs for Sansa, for her red hair and her blue eyes and her sweet smile and her pale and soft hands. She longs for her lovely sister, for the voice of another woman, for the sweetness of her touch, for the comfort of sleeping near her and have her body pressed against hers and maybe hear her sing once more. The complicity, the mutual understanding, the screams, the fights, the dancing, the embraces, everything —she wants everything, she longs for every bit of Sansa, every bit of her sister. They deserve that much at least.

“Talk to him, then. So many men have died already, you should make your peace with him.”

“You are right. Of course you are.”

He takes his leave then, and she’s left alone with her own thoughts and her own fears. 

* * *

Sansa sleeps with Nymeria at her feet every night. The wolf’s fur is soft and warm, and it makes her feel safe.

Word of the Maiden Wolf crossing the Bloody Gate arrives one night and chaos erupts at the Eyrie. She washes the dye off her hair with boiling water, rhubarb, lemon juice and cider vinegar and her hands become tainted with the brown dye. Then she dips her hair in bleach and lemon juice to give it a golden glow and get rid of the dull brown that still clings to her roots. It’s not the same red colour her hair used to be, not the Tully red that was her mother’s and her aunt’s and her brothers’, but it’s better than the brown Alayne had. She’ll have to wash her hair with boiling water, lemon juice and honey for some days until the dye washes off completely, but at least she is Sansa Stark again. She’s always been Sansa Stark, deep down in her head, right there in her heart.

The lords argue, and they argue loudly, over what to do with the army coming east. None of them are happy with Sweetrobin, who’s ordered them to let them through, but they are loyal, the lot of them, loyal to the core.

They don’t see her standing at the back of the room and so they argue like brutes, drinking and yelling and paying no mind to the distasteful look on Sweetrobin’s face. They’ve grown confident of their power over their young lord, they don’t know how smart he really is, or how _she_ is the one who moves the strings, she’s the one who lets the show go on.

“Enough,” she tells them, her voice nothing more than a whisper compared to their booming ones, but commanding enough that they all stop talking at the same time, “we will let them pass because the woman who leads them is Princess Arya Stark of Winterfell, Lord Arryn’s own cousin.”

“How can you know that?” someone asks.

Her smile is downright dangerous, a viper’s smile hungry for fresh blood, naïve men who think they’re stronger than her, who think they can outplay her in her own game with her own rules.

“Alayne?” Sweetrobin asks, confused.

She shakes her head, sad that she had to lie to her own kin in order to survive, but proud of her beating heart. She’s alive while others, older and wiser and stronger than her, have perished already.

“Because I am Sansa Stark, the rightful Queen in the North, and Princess Arya is my sister.”

* * *

Fights are not common in her army, not when they all fear her, but men are foolish little creatures who lose their minds when a bit of wine gets to their heads. When she sees the two men trying to reap their heads off, red-faced and clumsy, she barges in, sword held high. One of them backs off as soon as he sees who exactly is in front of them, but the other is just too drunk, too _stupid_ , and attacks her all the same. She has no mercy, no time for it, either, not when there’s a war to win; she kills him quickly, no need to make a mess, no need to make a show of it.

She finds Gendry in his own tent later and he doesn’t even flinch when she shows up with muddy breeches and blood on her cheeks.

“Your Highness.”

The silence that surrounds them is thick and heavy, air that sits deep in their lungs, like fire and ash. Gendry doesn’t really look at her, but rather at some point over her shoulder, but that doesn’t bother her.

“I’m sorry I left.”

It should offend her how surprised he looks when he hears her apology, but it actually shames her that he’d think so little of her as to believe her incapable of such decency. She might be no lady, but she’s a princess, a Warrior Princess, yes, but a princess nonetheless, and a Stark one at that; she’s a woman, a girl, a child, a breathing silly thing that used to believe in songs just as her sister, different kind of songs that had a Warrior Queen conquering the South or a woman living as an outlaw, songs she heard from Old Nan’s mouth or her mother’s —she is honourable, she lacks other things like gentleness or delicacy, but she is honourable, like her lord father taught her to be.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, “sorry because you deserved to be a knight.”

“Arya…”

“No, let me finish because I won’t say it again. You deserved more from me, you deserved knighthood and my support, you deserved happiness and the freedom to make your own choices. And I was selfish enough and so scared that I didn’t know how to give you that, and so I’m sorry.”

He still looks pained when he thinks and she wants to smile at that, but her stomach feels queasy with nerves, like everytime she drinks too much water.

“I’ve got some wine, cheese and bread, if you feel like sharing,” he says at last.

She sits beside him in his cot and she indulges so much in the wine she despises so much that they fall asleep one beside the other once they’re too drunk. She wakes up the next morning when it’s still dawn, her back to his chest and their limbs all tangled. It feels so warm, so very warm, and she’s been alone for so long… She doesn’t have the heart to get away from him, not now that she’s felt the warmth of his arms embracing her, not now that the hole in her heart is filling up again.

* * *

The wind is singing in her ears the day Arya arrives and pledges her sword to her. It’s Arya who crowns her Queen in the North with a crown of steel that weights heavy on her head, Arya who makes all the lords and ladies kneel, Arya who bows to her like a proper lady, Arya’s the one who sheds the first tear, too.

She accomodates Arya in the rooms next to hers and her most trustworhty men near her: Lord Dayne, the Sword of the Morning; the one they call the Bull, Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill; Thoros of Myr (that one she remembers), the red priest with his sword set aflame with wildfire.

They lie together in her bed before the feast begins, Arya’s hands tucked in her own.

“Oh, Arya, how I have missed you… My sweet and lovely sister, as wild as winter and summer all at once. Where have you been all this time?”

“I’ll tell you all of it once you’re sitting at Winterfell, with all the mighty force of winter behind you. Jon is alive at the Wall, I saw him through Nymeria’s eyes. Where is she, by the way?”

“She left,” Sansa says, feeling guilty, “I thought she had gone to get you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, we’ll see each other again. She must have something important to do. She was the one who brought me to you, you know, faithful as she’d been before we were separated. But there’s so many things I have to tell you, Sansa, so many… You won’t even believe me once you hear them all.”

“What is it, Arya? What can be so awful that I won’t believe it?”

“There was a woman, once, a ghost, an undead woman, Lady Stoneheart, her name used to be.”

Arya’s tale is terrible, unbelievable, but there’s such pain in her eyes that Sansa can’t help but accept it as the truth.

“She was Mother, Sansa, Lady Stoneheart was Mother.”

“And what happened to her? Where is she? Can I see her?”

“No,” Arya says, her eyes tightly shut, as if it hurts her to remember, “she burnt herself three days ago when Thoros lit the fire to gaze into the flames. But you must understand that she was not Mother, at all, she was dead to the core and rotten beyond repair. Just a shell of what Mother used to be; even I can understand that, naught but a shell with no soul. Oh, Sansa, but she remembered, that she did, she was looking for us and when she understood that I had found you, her purpose in this life was gone and she knew she had to leave too. But she didn’t need to worry, I’ll burn the Freys for her; I’ll march North and put that House to the sword and then I’ll march South again and release Riverrun from the Lannisters, for Uncle Edmure. Is he still alive?”

“Yes, he’s captive at Casterly Rock and his wife has birthed him a daughter: Minisa, they’ve named her, Minisa Tully. But you can’t put the whole House to the sword, Arya, the women and the children…”

“If this were Essos I’d give them to the Dothraki as slaves, as a gift.”

“But it isn’t, Arya.”

“I know, this is why _you_ will decide what to do with them. Afterall, you’re the Queen.”

* * *

Vayona likes the Eyrie well enough and Sansa finds a place in the kitchens for her mother so the girl can run around as she pleases. It’s all about the innocence, Arya thinks, and how Vayona reminds her of her own childhood, as different as it was: Vayona returned her her humanity, something not even the memory of her family had accomplished.

Gendry takes her maidenhead on the eve before they march north to take the Twins and she doesn’t know what to do after, but he hugs her from behind and tangles his legs with hers and at dawn she wakes up to feel half his body atop her back, his cheek resting inbetween her shoulderblades and one of his hands curled on her waist.

Sansa only laughs when she sees the lovebites on her breasts, her neck and the inside of her thighs while she’s helping her bath before they part their ways, and reminds her to spare the women and the children once she’s taken the Twins. Arya kisses her on the lips as a promise and rides at the head of her army, head held high and ready.

* * *

Sansa cuts all ties with the rest of the Kingdom as soon as she can and the Riverlands and the Crownlands begin to starve again. The Vale is rich in many ways, they have grain and salt and meat, mostly honey, though, and at times like this all they have is what the lands who have suffered the most need: the Riverlands had been devastated years ago and the Crownlands have no means to feed all the population by themselves.

They’re the enemy and she’s bringing them down stone by stone, if it needs be.

* * *

It takes them thirty-seven days to make the Twins begin to break, nine more before they fall completely at their mercy. Walder Frey dies at the hands of his own wife, a young girl who slashes his throat while singing _The Rains of Castamere_ , Arya’s told.

One of Walder Frey’s sons dares demand justice for his Father and Arya only smiles and names Lady Joyeuse, the wife, Lady of the Twins, now the sit of House Erenford.

“This is the justice I give,” she tells him, before letting her sword fall over his neck, beheading him before he can say anything back.

She spares the women and the children as she promised her sister, kills the men over two-and-ten and lets Gendry take her on the Lord’s featherbed while the bards sing about her in the Great Hall.

The same mercy her Mother and Robb got, she gives, and the tales of how she made her men sew chicken heads on the Freys’ necks run all over the Continent, faster then wildfire. They all feast on chicken that night and she howls at the moon when Gendry makes her fall apart with just his tongue for the first time. 

* * *

 _Tyrion Lannister waited with a goblet of wine on his hand for the Hand of the King to stop talking so he could speak. This new King of his had grown wiser, humbler, more meticulous; he was no longer a prince, he thought, but a true King._ And a Commander, too, I mustn’t forget that.

_“Lord Tyrion, you are concerned.”_

_Tyrion smiled and the action made him remember a time when his nose would have twitched before scrunching up, but now there was only a hole where his nose used to be and a scar that made him uglier than he was before. It wasn’t the only one, he was covered in those pink and white lines, ones fresher, others older._

_“Aye, indeed. Old memories are coming back to haunt the living.”_

_“Others from beyond the Wall? Surely you would not believe this, my lord?”_

_Tyrion took a sip of wine before answering, thinking of his brief stay with the brothers of the Night’s Watch. The King was young still, not much younger than him, granted, but he felt the difference was so big that he could very well have passed for a man of sixty and the King for a child of ten._

_“I knew the Lord Commander years ago and I believe what he says; your aunt has dragons, the Stark children had direwolves and there’s something ancient stirring underneath our feet, waking all through the Seven Kingdoms and beyond. But I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking of a girl long dead, or so it was presumed, and another one who went missing without leaving a trace, coming back to the world of the living to avenge their dead.”_

_The King frowned, confused._

_“He speaks of the Stark sisters, Your Grace,” said the Hand, frowning too._

_“I speak of the Queen in the North and my very own wife, Sansa Stark, and her sister, Lady Arya, the Maiden Wolf who put House Frey to the sword and is now marching south to free Riverrun from the Lannisters.”_

_Someone of the Small Council snickered and the Hand said, “They are girls, barely women.”_

_“They’re the last members of a butchered family and they are taking castle after castle after castle: Lady Arya has taken the Twins, Seagard, Oldstones and Fairmarket already and Lord Arryn’s men have taken Saltpans, Maidenpool and are marching now towards Harrenhal. They mean to circle Riverrun and siege it until it falls, and fall it will, I tell you. Are you familiar with the tale of what happened at the Red Wedding, Your Grace?” he asked, not bothering to let him answer. “If not, allow me to tell you: King Robb was betrothed to one of Lord Walder Frey’s daughters but he married a Westerling instead. My father, gentle soul that he was, decided to take advantage of it. King Robb, in order to appease Lord Frey, made his own uncle, Lord Tully, marry one of late Walder’s daughters, but during the feast, while Lord Tully was bedding his pretty, little wife, the Freys and the Boltons, who were bannermen of the Starks, butchered everyone, stabbed the King to death and chopped his head off to sew his direwolf’s head in its place. Lady Stark was killed too and the few survivors… I’m not sure there were any survivors…”_

_“The Boltons will be punished for their crime, as it is law, but those girls…”_

_“I am not finished, my lord,” said Tyrion, ignoring the glare from the Hand. “When Lady Arya took the Twins, do you know what she did to the men? She chopped their heads off and made her men sew chickens in their place. These are women with no mercy for those who’ve wronged them; these are women you do not want to meet in the battlefield.”_

_“What will you have me do, my lord?”_

_Tyrion locked eyes with the King. The boy had recently seen his twenty-first nameday and he looked a man already, his face the most handsome, the most beautiful, he had ever seen; Aegon VI was even more comely than Jaime had been at this age, for his beauty was somewhat impossible, unnatural, very much ethereal: he had his mother’s skin, toned down by a Targaryen paleness that made it look like liquid, eyes that shined purple and silver hair._

_“Ally with them or pray the wolves forget about us.”_

 

 


End file.
